Commission launches consultation on modernising and simplifying the common agricultural policy (CAP)

6 March 2017

Last month, the DG AGRI (Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development; a department of the European Commission responsible for EU policy on agriculture and rural development) has launched a Public Consultation on modernising and simplifying the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). All stakeholders of the CAP are welcome to contribute to this process by completing an impact assessment questionnaire on the performance of the current policy.

The CAP was developed in the early sixties to translate the objectives defined in the Treaty of Rome (1957) into policy, and was subsequently taken over in the Treaty on the European Union. While the CAP has undergone several waves of reforms, with the latest decided in 2013 and implemented in 2015, there is currently a big public debate whether the last reform went far enough to meet broader challenges related for example to the economic prospects for agriculture and rural areas, the care for the environment, climate change and sustainable and safe food production.

Against this background, the European Commission (EC) consults widely on simplification and modernisation of the CAP to maximise its contribution to the Commission’s ten priorities and to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The questionnaire is part of this wide consultation process and will contribute to the impact assessment. Results will be published on the ECs webpage and communicated in a public conference in July 2017.

This project has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement n°FP7-613556